In scanning the regular litany of security alerts,
bulletins, and software updates that come to the attention of the average IT
professional, it's interesting how many of them over the past two years have been
focused around flaws and attacks that involve Internet Explorer.

Many of the issues surrounding IE involve hackers luring
users to malicious Web sites, which then use nefarious tactics to exploit IE
flaws and compromise the user's system. Of course, luring the average user with
misleading e-mails and hyperlinks is not very difficult to do, and as a result,
some IT departments are now deciding that the constant patching and security
concerns of supporting IE are not worth it, and many of them are turning to the
upstart Web browser Firefox
as an alternative.

The following articles chart the rise of Firefox and the
reasons for its growing popularity:

Firefox
provides a legitimate alternative to IE – Here's an article that was
written back when Firefox was still a beta release. Even then, Firefox was
already beginning to make some noise and draw some converts, and this
article begins to explain where Firefox came from and why it became
attractive to users.

Firefox aims for 10 percent
of Web surfers – In October 2004, a spokesman for Mozilla, the organization
behind Firefox, said that he expected Firefox to gobble up 10 percent of the
Web browser market. This article provides a look at the basic timetable that Firefox
is aiming for.

Mozilla releases
Firefox 1.0 – Just over a year and a half after development began, Mozilla
released Firefox 1.0, and on the first day the upstart browser got over 1
million downloads. This article explains that a big part of the lure for
Firefox has been the growing perception that IE is a security and privacy risk.

Microsoft says
Firefox not a threat to IE – Shortly after Firefox was released,
Microsoft officials gave a collective shrug and said that IE's market
share was not under significant attack and that IE was not inherently less
secure than any other browser.

Dear IE, I'm leaving
you for good – Here's a colorful and satirical letter that CNET editor Robert Vamosi wrote to Internet Explorer explaining why he
was leaving IE for Firefox. Along with the wit, you'll find a lot of the common
reasons that are driving users and IT departments to adopt Firefox.